Wow, the speed of orbial flight in Horizns is *fast*!

Cmdr Mnumen

Cmdr Mnumen
The latest video from DB shows the transition from Orbital Cruise to planetaty 'flight'. It looks to me like immediately after the transition his Eagle is still moving at 2,500 km/s! That is *very* fast for atmospheric flight.... in fact, it ~9 million km/h, or Mach 7346! :eek::eek:

For reference, speeds of objects in low earth orbit are ~28,000 km/h (300 times slower).

1) I hope no one crashes at this speed!
2) They will need to change this for atmospheric landing because even a rarefied atmosphere will see us turn into brief, bright, fireballs at this speed.

Even the ~400 km/s he slows down to immediately after is 50x faster than the space station orbits and is > Mach 1000...
 
Last edited:

bigian12

bigian12
Cmdr Mnumen said:
The latest video from DB shows the transition from Orbital Cruise to planetaty 'flight'. It looks to me like immediately after the transition his Eagle is still moving at 2,500 km/s! That is *very* fast for atmospheric flight.... in fact, it ~9 million km/h, or Mach 7346! :eek::eek:

For reference, speeds of objects in low earth orbit are ~28,000 km/h (300 times slower).

1) I hope no one crashes at this speed!
2) They will need to change this for atmospheric landing because even a rarefied atmosphere will see us turn into brief, bright, fireballs at this speed.

Even the ~400 km/s he slows down to immediately after is 50x faster than the space station orbits and is > Mach 1000...
Click to expand...

There is no atmospheres yet so no atmospheric flight, and the speeds are in m/s not km/s.
 
Last edited:

shadragon

shadragon
Going from DBOBE's Europa video the Glide portion looks like a intermediate mode of getting you closer to the surface faster. Not sure if it is preset or manually controlled. I'll see for myself Monday, of course.

He was 135'ish KM away from the station when Glide mode started and 50 KM away when it ended. That's five times the distance you normally traverse in space to get to a station. Even boosting, it took a while for him to get to the surface station.

Nice to see an Eagle can carry an SRV though.
 
Last edited:

ironhammer500

I
bigian12 said:
2500 m/s is still very fast mind you. Makes you wonder how an atmosphere will react to that kind of speed.
Click to expand...

Considering its 9000 kmh, which i some how think its a bad reference to the saying its over 9000! Cant be a coincidence they picked 2500 m/s, but id say 9000 kmh is going to be pretty heavy as that is probably around the area of reentry speeds. So id expect some pretty fireworks and maybe we might have to manage heating issues to avoid heat damage.
 

SentineI

SentineI
Cmdr Mnumen said:
It looks to me like immediately after the transition his Eagle is still moving at 2,500 km/s!
Click to expand...
It may say "2500" on the HUD (without any accompanying units), but it takes him 7.9 seconds to reduce the distance to Haberlandt Survey by 20km. So his actual speed is around 20km/7.9s = 2.5 km/s . That means the units of the HUD are m/s not km/s!
 
Last edited:

Gryphorim

G
bigian12 said:
2500 m/s is still very fast mind you. Makes you wonder how an atmosphere will react to that kind of speed.
Click to expand...

Fast enough to get a reentry glow happening around your ship! FD will probably reuse the blue haze from SC transition/glide mode and recolour it in fiery tones. Probably add a heating mechanic to it as well.
 

Brujah

Brujah
ironhammer500 said:
Considering its 9000 kmh, which i some how think its a bad reference to the saying its over 9000! Cant be a coincidence they picked 2500 m/s, but id say 9000 kmh is going to be pretty heavy as that is probably around the area of reentry speeds. So id expect some pretty fireworks and maybe we might have to manage heating issues to avoid heat damage.
Click to expand...

I feel a Photoshop job pending.
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
We should be OK regardless, even when we get atmospheric flight. We can fly into the corona of a star, fly through black holes. What's a little atmospheric friction going to do?
 

ironhammer500

I
Ydiss said:
We should be OK regardless, even when we get atmospheric flight. We can fly into the corona of a star, fly through black holes. What's a little atmospheric friction going to do?
Click to expand...

Id like some sort of heat management like we have when fuel scooping, Ie if you wanna glide faster you can at the price of taking more heat and risk damage.
 

DaveB

DaveB
Ydiss said:
We should be OK regardless, even when we get atmospheric flight. We can fly into the corona of a star, fly through black holes. What's a little atmospheric friction going to do?
Click to expand...

Agreed but hopefully we'll still see the ionization effect from all that atmosphere slamming into your shields at that velocity :)

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

ironhammer500 said:
Id like some sort of heat management like we have when fuel scooping, Ie if you wanna glide faster you can at the price of taking more heat and risk damage.
Click to expand...

That would be cool too :)
 

Mushroom

M
Also glide mode was commented to end either when angle of attack is to high or once you are in a altitude of 7km.

My biggest question is this can we maintain glide mode indefinitely or is there some minimum angle of attack you need.

Just curious as getting to a station on decent time could be done if one can maintain the glide mode for long periods.

but on Monday i should be able to test it, but damn i am getting a real urge to try this stuff out.
 

ironhammer500

I
Mushroom said:
Also glide mode was commented to end either when angle of attack is to high or once you are in a altitude of 7km.

My biggest question is this can we maintain glide mode indefinitely or is there some minimum angle of attack you need.

Just curious as getting to a station on decent time could be done if one can maintain the glide mode for long periods.

but on Monday i should be able to test it, but damn i am getting a real urge to try this stuff out.
Click to expand...

Im sure many in their sideys will explore this probably only to hit the ground.
 

Mephane

Mephane
I am rather wondering whether the ships would correctly accelerate downwards due to gravity when flying with FAOFF, and not be limited by their normal flight and boost speeds. Otherwise, an Anaconda would fall slow than a Viper - in vacuum!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom